Topic > Education: The importance of education in Pakistan

Literacy generally means that one must be able to read and write, but unfortunately a large number of Pakistan's population is deprived of this. Pakistan's literacy rate has remained at 58% for the past two years and the country looks set to miss the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for education. Pakistan has been required to increase its literacy rate to 88% by 2015. The net primary school enrollment rate, which was expected to be 100% by the end of this year, has remained constant at 57% since 2011-2012. Despite spending just over 2% of its budget on education, the government has failed to improve the education sector, due to the poor performance of the governments of Sindh and Baluchistan. Pervez Musharraf put a lot of effort into education when he was President of Pakistan and that period saw a visible positive educational change in Pakistani society. Pakistan is currently facing some serious economic problems which also affect the education system. In the Human Development Report, Pakistan ranks 136th for having only 49.9% of its population educated. The primary school completion rate in Pakistan, provided by the UNESCO Date Center, is 33.8% for women and 47.18% for men, which shows that people in the world's sixth largest country they are unable to obtain basic skills